Culture & Community | Dixwell | Arts & Culture | New Haven Free Public Library | Community Heroes | Arts & Anti-racism | Elm City Freddy Fixer Parade
Top: Patricia Jackson, Diane Brown and Samantha Galberth. Jackson and Galberth co-own Style 2000, which won first place for the Grand Mashal’s Award in this year's parade. Bottom: Petisia Adger, Jacqueline Glover, Belito Garcia, Samod Rankins, Arden Santana, Reese McLeod and Diane Brown. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Reese McLeod can’t imagine New Haven without the Elm City Freddy Fixer Parade. As a kid, she looked forward to parade day for months, from the outfits she carefully put together to the vibrant colors that flooded Dixwell Avenue. Well before June this year, she was eager to roll up her sleeves and get to work.
So when leadership put out a call to keep the event going, she stepped up—and brought a whole team with her.
A daughter of New Haven, McLeod is the new president of the Elm City Freddy Fixer Parade Committee (EFPCC), the organization that fundraises for and runs the eponymously named parade each year. Announced Wednesday night at Stetson Branch Library, new ECFPCC team members include McLeod, Secretary Arden Santana, Treasurer and retired Fire Capt. Samod “Nuke” Rankins, and Sergeant at Arms Belito Garcia.
They replace Board President Diane Brown and Vice President Petisia Adger, who have kept the parade going through several leadership transitions, fundraising woes, and a global pandemic (read more about that here). While the two have said they’re leaving before, “this time it’s real,” Brown said. Thanking fellow organizers Jacqueline Glover, Monique Cain and Iman Hameen, she added that she has full confidence in the new team.
Johnny Johnson and Joshua Smith, who won first place for the Majorette and Dance Factory and James Hillhouse High School Marching Band. Bottom: Volunteers, including McLeod, who were recognized for their service.
“I have a lot of creative ideas and am so grateful that they believe in me,” McLeod said Wednesday night, as attendees received awards for leadership, service and artistry in this year’s parade. “We want to include more schools, more bands and dancers, more colors … we want to continue to let the community know that this is for them.”
For McLeod and fellow members of the leadership team, it’s a responsibility that feels as natural as it does historic and huge. Last December, McLeod met Brown through the inaugural “Winter Wonderland,” a holiday festival at Stetson and the Dixwell Avenue Q House. In the months that followed, she signed up as a volunteer with the Freddy Fixer Parade, helping with everything from its star-studded gala to a return to Dixwell Avenue.
When Brown and Adger announced that they would be stepping down months ago, McLeod asked how she could be most helpful. Then she kept asking, and showing up to planning meetings. The answer, Brown told her, was stepping into leadership to ensure the event’s continuation.
While the ECFFPC has not yet announced a date, Brown said that there will definitely be a 2025 parade. “This is your incoming parade committee, they have a lot of work to do,” she said. “They are committed … we’re ready to go for 2025.”
Top: Trent Butler of Chin Check Friday, which won second place for the Grand Marshal's Award. Bottom: Menafee accepts the award for Elite.
Each member of the new team brings a different skill set to the planning process. McLeod is a public administrator with years of volunteering experience, Santana is a creative and educator, Rankins is a dedicated public servant who has served as the parade's Grand Marshal, and Garcia is a professional life and business coach and Philly transplant (and Santana’s partner) who has become a champion of New Haven.
Several of them also grew with the Freddy, and wouldn’t want to live in a New Haven without it.
Santana, who has been going since her childhood, recognized it as a fixture in the city. When it took a brief pause during her high school years, something about those summers didn’t feel right. During the years that she lived in Philly, she often spoke about it with Garcia, who came to New Haven with her when she made the move back.
“I just can’t imagine New Haven without it,” she said Wednesday. “It was always exciting because of the people, the music, the socializing. It was a gathering … like a huge cookout or a block party.”
When she heard that leadership was stepping down for good, “it felt natural to call Diane and say, ‘How do I help? How do I support?’”
In the spirit of the parade, Wednesday also marked a kind of miniature Freddy reunion, with laughter and applause that filled the second floor of the library. As attendees tucked into plates of mac and cheese, tender green beans, chopped chicken and cornbread, Brown and Adger announced a number of awardees, from Best Marching Unit, Drill Team and Motorcycle Group to the Elm City Freddy Fixer Spirit Award.
“Good evening, beautiful Black people,” Brown said gently at one point, to bring the room to attention, and the greeting felt right on time.
This year, those recognitions carried cash prizes, made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation that is now in its second year of funding. For many of the awardees, it was also a moment to savor and relive the sun-soaked parade day that filled Dixwell Avenue with joyful, sometimes cacophonous sound three months ago.
Beaming as he accepted an award for “Best Drill Team”—it’s the second consecutive year the team has won—Elite Drill Squad Director Ryshon Menafee remembered watching the Freddy as a kid, and then jumping in as a member of Mob Squad when his aunt, Tracey Menafee-Hie, put out the call. He was just eight, maybe nine years old, and it shaped the kind of mentor he wanted to become himself.
Top, clockwise: James Hillhouse Marching Band member Zariah Dumas, Hafeeza Ture, Zariyah Whitehurst, Belito Garcia and Arden Santana in this year's parade. Bottom: Members of Elite earlier this summer in the parade.
While Mob Squad may no longer exist, “I wanted the kids to have the same experience I had,” Menafee said. “It’s about the community coming together.” As social media becomes a new challenge to young people’s mental health, he added, he wants to provide a healthy alternative that builds confidence, provides a sort of dance and drill family, and gets young people off their phones.
Nearby, Style 2000 Co-Owners Samantha Galberth and Patricia Jackson celebrated their first place win of the Grand Marshal’s Award. What was strange about it, Galberth mused, is that it almost didn’t happen.
After participating in the parade for years, the duo had decided not to march in this year’s Freddy Fixer Parade. Then Brown came to their Whalley Avenue shop.
“She came to the shop, she talked to all of us, and boom! We was there and we had fun,” Galberth said to fellow attendees with a smile. It feels doubly meaningful because this is an anniversary year for Style 2000: the shop turns 30 this fall.
“It was everything to us,” Galberth later added of both the parade and of marching this year. As a kid, she attended, and later joined as a member of Elm City Drill Team. Now, she’s glad to march as an adult and small business owner in the city that raised her. “It brings back such memories.”
“It means a lot to me to see people get together and show love to each other,” added Jackson, who moved to the U.S. at 10 and grew up watching the parade. She joked that Galberth is the Laverne to her Shirley, ready to bring her flamboyant personality back to the Freddy year after year. “After Covid, we needed this.”